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a well designed, affordable and reliable glue gun

I love my Richmond glue gun and it has proved to be invaluable. I have used it to mend the soles of my boots, fixing the sleeve of my leather jacket, doing small repairs on various handbags, putting up plastic hooks in my kitchen and bathroom and attaching a few mirrored mosaic 'bubbles' on my bathroom wall. The reason I reason I actually bought the glue gun though was for my crafting as this is my one and only hobby and I love to hand craft my own greetings cards.

It has a fairly large nozzle from where the glue is dispensed but I use a cocktail stick to dab a little when I am doing more intricate work such as attaching small embellishments such as dried flowers or diamonte-type stones and sequins etc and it works time after time without fail. For larger projects I am working on I find it can be very generous and it does not take long before working how hard or gentle I should be when squeezing the trigger.

The gun comes in a moulded case which has spaces for the gun (including the 1.5m cable), the stand and several glue sticks. I paid just a fiver for mine because the case was slightly scratched and I found it in my local independent craft shop. They sell glue guns at Hobbycraft but cannot say if they stock Richmond ones.

It takes only about 5 minutes to heat up and you can tell when it is ready to use because the end of the nozzle shows clear liquid. With an easy to use trigger and a handy thin metal stand on which to rest it when not in use, it is very hard to make mistakes - just aim and gently squeeze! The replacement sticks are just fed through the end (please see picture - the opposite end to the nozzle) where they soon melt meaning you get a continuous flow with no need to switch off mid-project.

There was a leaflet enclosed advising how to use the gun and warnings about not touching the heated glue with naked hands, avoiding surfaces you don't want glued etc. It DOES get hot and I mean hot enough to burn the fingers as I can verify - I have a couple of small scars to prove it... but obviously if it did not reach a high temperature it would not be effective. 240 volts and 40 watts of power just has to be good.

My friend has borrowed my Richmond for mending an ornament and a couple of plastic and wooden toys so I think it is well worth investing in this little tool 'just in case'? I am sure it would not be good for using on fabrics though, except for felt, may get too hot to use on thin plastic and I would definitely test a small patch of the medium to be stuck before getting carried away with it and live to regret it!

This glue gun, imho, is great - I have had it almost 7 years and it has never let me down. The glue sticks are cheap at around 10 for £1.99 but they last quite some time. The tool is sturdy but not heavy, the little case it comes with is well designed and practical and I can think of no reason why I should award any less than 5 stars.

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Worth having around

==Richmond Glue Gun Bw40/6810==

Glue guns are something I have great memories of from when I was at school as there was something a bit special about the fact that in technology you wee able to use this gun like item that spewed out molten hot glue. It was a little bit dangerous and a little bit exciting too. As well I can always remember my mum having one of these in her dresser in the dining room as she was often found doing crafty type things and although I never saw her use it I think she would use it a lot once I was in bed and she was let loose on her crafts. It wasn't until we had a house of our own and I began to need things fixing and I also became a bit crafty myself so what else could be better than to get my very own glue gun and to be honest I am really not sure what I did before it!

==Price and Availability==

I have seen many various shops in town that all sorts of different glue guns at a range of prices so I wasn't sure too what I wanted at first but after a little look around and a talk with mum about her glue gun I decided that for the general uses I wanted it for my first glue gun should be cheap! There were some for sale in a local cheap shop for a few pounds but it didn't look up to much and I thought I would look online to see if I could get one which looked a bit more sturdy but still at a low cost.

It seems that the internet is full of places from where you could get a relatively cheap glue gun so it wasn't a hard task to try and find one which suited my needs. I found a site where I would get this Richmond Glue Gun for £10 all in with postage and packaging costs together with a pack of five of the glue sticks to go with it. This seemed like a really good price although the glue sticks sold separately are not too expensive to buy but with the postage costs the gun and glue is very affordable.

==Look and Design==

This Glue Gun I bought was pretty much the same as how I remember them looking from school and also looks just like the one my mum has. It's not a particularly brilliant design and general has a rather basic look and feel to it. Most of the Glue Guns that I came across had a similar look to them and as long as it does the job it is not really an item where it matters what it looks like.

The design of the gun means that it is easy to use and does the job well with the way it is set up. The Glue Gun is a main powered item, although I do believe if required you can get a battery powered one or a detachable charger one but for these the price does vary accordingly. This one has a power cable of 1.5 meters which is long enough to do the majority of jobs but of course not long enough when I have wanted to glue things up in the bathroom. When doing crafts though this is more than enough to sit comfortably at the table and manoeuvre the glue gun.

The 240 volts of the gun and the 40 watts of power mean that the gun heats up relatively quickly and is good to use within 5 to 10 minutes. The blue plastic casing of the main body of the gun does get pretty hot when the gun is warming up or in use so this is not really a suitable item for small children and should be kept well out of their way. It also stays hot to touch for a good while after so can't be packed away until it has completely cooled off and I tend to leave it out for a good hour or two before putting it back into the drawer.

There is a small thin metal stand which is positioned on the front underside of the glue gun and this aids the gun to kept kept in a position where is it sort of stood up and the handle is raised and the point of the gun where the glue comes from is close to your work surface. Whilst the gun is heating up and the glue getting warm enough to use, the glue which is kept inside the gun begins to seep out slowly and leak on to your surface which is why it is always a good idea to have it on a bit of newspaper or a chopping boar you don't mind getting it on. It does however flick of my kitchen work top once the glue it dry so even if you don't put some newspaper down it won't cause any real damage to your surface.

The trigger on this gun feels quite sturdy and this was the part I worried about most and would think would be the first part to break and meant hat the glue gun wouldn't work. I think some of the cheaper versions of the gun have a flimsier trigger which is why I didn't opt for the cheapest of the cheap ones. However as I say this trigger feels good and for the long period of time that I have now had this gun and the hundreds of times that I have used it, it is still going strong and feeling sturdy.

The area in which the glue sticks are inserted is located into the back end of the gun and the more glue is used the more the sticks shrink. There is no waste with the glue sticks and they are made of per glue which is all heated and pumped out of the front spout on the gun. The sticks of glue are easy to feed into the gun and once the stick is offered into the hole in the back of the gun it begins to be slowly fed through the gun and heated up and you don't even really need to push it in at all.

The spout of the glue gun is not especially fine and does pump out a chunky line of glue but of course the quicker you move the gun the more stretched the glue gets as it comes from the spout and the thinner the line then is. The spout does get covered in glue from time to time but once it is cool you can more or less ping off any excess glue that is on it and it then looks as good as new.

==General use of the Product==

It didn't take especially long to get the hang of using the glue gun and I am now classed as an expert (by myself). I often find myself wondering how I did without the gun (this is only when I am using it) but it really is such a handy item to have around the house and not just for craft items either and its surprising how much I use it. The fact that the gun sticks most things means that it is really versatile and often far more effective than using super glue. The flexible type of stick that the gun gives means that for a lot of things it is the better glue to use compared with the rigidity of a super glue. The gun itself is really easy to use and other than plugging it in there are no buttons to press or settings to choose from all you do is pug it in and wait for it to heat up then away you go.

My proudest moment of using my glue gun (sad I know) was when I bought a set of brand new but broken bedroom furniture for Jacks room at a ridiculously cheap price from a store in town as they couldn't sell it was nearly giving it away. It was that wicker basket type of drawer system where there is a basic wooden frame which is where the bottom rungs had been snapped and broken. There were two items both different and snapped in various places but once home and the glue gun heated up I spent the evening slowly putting the glue in the right places and after a few minutes when the glue was dry the whole lot looked as good as new and you would never know that they were broken at all. The glue has kept the furniture together very well and hasn't broken again even with Jack pulling the drawers in and out when they are full to bursting with his Lego.

Not only that but I was forever sticking jacks toy net in the bathroom back onto the tiles but would always fall off again. The plastic suction cups of the net were pretty worn and didn't seem to grip the tile too much any more but after a splatting of glue from the glue gun (I did have to heat it up in the kitchen, unplug it and then run to the bathroom with it) it stuck up well for ages and it wasn't until I wanted to wash it that it came off. It then popped off the tiles with relative easy and left no damage to the tiles at all.

==Overall Opinion==

I really can't rate this glue gun highly enough. It is suitable for so many different jobs around the house and garden that it has already had its money use and well worth every penny. I often find when anything is broken in the house I find myself asking "Can I fix it with my Glue Gun?" and more often than not I can!

Not only is it versatile and easy to use but it is also far more affordable than using super glue as the glue sticks for this gun are priced very cheaply for a large amount where as super glue is super expensive for a good branded one. Of course this doesn't always do the jobs that can be done with super glue like fixing fine plates or china type of goods but I do find I don't really need super glue at all when I have this glue gun.

I have to give this item a top score of 5 out of 5 stars and a super recommendation as it is just such a great item. I should think that this one will do me many more years but if it should break I would probably go out and get the same one as I can't find a single fault with it at all.